Anyone sold a car to Malta?

[jmsgld]

£20k + car on Autotrader selling privately, only real interest from the trade.

I have agreed to sell to someone from Malta who will have his UK car buyer come and collect.

All sounds genuine, buyer asking sensible questions and haggling, his buyer couldn't make it for a few days so agreed and paid pretty instantly a £500 holding deposit.

Spoken to his uk car buyer on the phone and he too sounds genuine, wants picking up from the train station.

This morning the Maltese guy phoned and asked for my passport number for the bank, I ended up giving him my driver license number...

Does this sound normal or am I heading for some sort of scam?

[kiethton]

How is payment being made, if you have fully cleared funds - BACS/CHAPS cash checked and paid into your account you're home and dry.

I sold a car to a foreign purchaser a good few years ago - a £15k E92 335i - got shipped to New Zealand.

I'd seen that he's checked me out on LinkedIn, we'd spoken via my work e-mail address to, he sent an RAC inspector around to check the car over then transferred £15k cash via CHAPS. I continued to use the car for a week or 2 before it was collected and shipped overseas

[jmsgld]

The Maltese guy is transferring the money into the UK car buyer's account for a balance transfer, presumably "faster payment".

Is this any less secure than BACS / CHAPS?

I obviously stated that the car would not be released until funds cleared, he seemed to expect as much.

It all sounds genuine to me, just the request for passport or DL number that seemed a bit odd.

[GreatGranny]

Maybe for his bank to check that the money is going to a UK bank account?

That it's all genuine and is for what he says it's for.

Not sure what the rules are in Malta with transferring large (-ish) sums of money abroad.

[xjay1337]

I was in Malta last week.
Lots of UK registered cars there.

I suspect many people whom may have business interests out there ship a car there.

[steve-5snwi]

Yep, pretty straight forward. Banks work differently and it will be the bank that pays you. Make sure its cleared funds before releasing the car and that the V5 is sent as export, you will give them the complete V5 taking the blue section out and sending that off to the DVLA.

[KarlMac]

xjay1337 said:

I was in Malta last week.
Lots of UK registered cars there.

I suspect many people whom may have business interests out there ship a car there.

I was there a couple of months ago and was really surprised by the highly active car scene over there. Given the fairly low population and the isolation of the island it's was a nice surprise to see a really nice variety of cool cars. Lots of Japanese, retro British and American stuff.

[GreatGranny]

Watched this a hew years ago during a holiday over there to see a good mate and his family.

Some fantastic cars on display and competing.

http://www.maltaclassic.com/

[xjay1337]

KarlMac said:

I was there a couple of months ago and was really surprised by the highly active car scene over there. Given the fairly low population and the isolation of the island it's was a nice surprise to see a really nice variety of cool cars. Lots of Japanese, retro British and American stuff.

Yeah quite!

Although I found for every nice car there are 15 other really badly modified ones
Tastes etc are different and the roads are awful there for the most part so can't really blame them.

[valiant]

Was also over there a few months back and being a bit bored, started looking at used prices.

fking hell, do they pay a lot for stuff that would be near scrap value over here. Noticed this before in other European countries and goes to show what little we pay for used cars over here. Plus being Malta, it's all right hand drive stuff so it may well be cheaper to buy and ship from here than buy locally or make a decent roadtrip for the truely committed car nut. Take what? 2-3 days? Not a bad jaunt.

[jmsgld]

Sold the car today to be exported to Malta.

All went smoothly, picked the guy up from the train station, he checked the car had a quick phone call with his client, everyone happy, transferred funds whilst we drove back to mine, signed paperwork, done and dusted within an hour.

The only minor issue was that his train was late...